(Just pointing that out, so you generous BRAD BLOG donors realize you're getting your money's worth by getting the scoops long before the rest of the world even wakes up And by way of torturously cryptic value-added teaser: Much more to come from other major MSM sources in the near future. Much.)

But back to NEWSWEEK...Levy's piece begins this way...

May 29, 2006 issue - Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the voting booth, here comes more disturbing news about the trustworthiness of electronic touchscreen ballot machines. Earlier this month a report by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti analyzed Diebold voting machines for an organization called Black Box Voting. Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in the machines that are currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of millions of Americans.

How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems.

With that said, we recommend you read Levy's piece --- it's not long --- for a few more thoughts and details. But we'll nitpick one or two of them here. Most notably taking the opportunity to highlight Diebold's desperato spokesman, David Bear's latest gasp...

"[Our critics are] throwing out a 'what if' that's premised on a basis of an evil, nefarious person breaking the law," says Bear.

In the Times piece, he put it this way:

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," [Diebold spokesman, David Bear] said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Also, David Bear tells NEWSWEEK, the earth is most definitely flat! And Santa Claus is real, dammit!

Goodness knows, we'd never have any "evil, nefarious person breaking the law" or even any "evil elections people" who would do so. There's only millions and billions of dollars at stake based on who wins these elections! So why would anyone ever want to do anything untoward? Can't we all just get along? Maybe just a show of hands would be better. Or we could just ask Bear for his opinion on all the election contests and go home early.

Our one quibble with NEWSWEEK'spiece --- (other then they're a week or two late jumping in on this one, so didn't cover the still more stunning revelation that we did earlier this week --- well, that's what next week's for, we guess) --- Levy sets his sights on the need for mandatory "paper receipts" for electronic voting machines to ensure security.

Paper "Receipts" or "Trails" are not the same as Paper BALLOTS, which can be counted...unlike "Receipts" or "Trails" that can't and aren't and won't be. But one victory at a time, we guess.

Levy finishes off with a worthy question (even if he should know that NEWSWEEK'S own delinquency in covering these issues is partly the answer to it):

Six years after the 2000 electoral debacle, how can this be?

Just look in the mirror, Steve.

UPDATE: Steven Levy responded to this article in comments below. Since we took a shot or two at him (though, mostly aimed at NEWSWEEK in general, for whom he became a surrogate whipping boy in our piece above), it seems only fair to elevate his response to this article to make sure you are able to read it. Here's his response:

Appreciate your linking to my column. Can I have a nitpick of my own? For the record I have been writing about voting technology in Newsweek for several years (you can Google this!). Last week I wrote a column about the NSA datamining, but when I saw the results of that Diebold study I felt it appropriate to devote my column this week to the voting situation once more. As for the receipts versus ballots issue you bring up, in my limited space this week I simply considered the broader issue of auditability. Best, Steven

We'll respond only by mentioning that understand and appreciate Levy's general sentiment, re: limited column space to cover the auditability issue in general. Though the idea that the toilet-paper roll --- so-called "voter-verified paper trail", which are now being installed reluctantly by vendors on touch-screen systems in response to complaints of a lack of paper record --- can actually be counted or audited at all is the question. Since it cannot be audited in any reasonable way, and isn't actually counted at all by any state or county that we know of, we feel the false of sense of security it offers does more harm than good. Supporting the half-hearted attempts by vendors and elections officials to disingenously appease voters, even in limited space, is what we question.

Beyond that, of course readers may Google Steven's and NEWSWEEK'S coverage of the issue to determine for themselves if they feel it has been adequate. We greatly appreciate his responding to our piece.

It can be because for the last six years, you and your fellow troglodytes in the corporate-controlled media have been pretending these problems were merely fantasies by "conspiracy theorists." You've avoided the issue like the plague. You've ignored reality.

You've told us elections in Ukraine and Belarus were fraudulent. Apparently they don't have conspiracy theorists over there...right? Only desperate people afraid of losing an election. But we don't have such people here. No. Not possible.

Newsweek is at least consistent. For as long as I can remember they've always been the last news source to cover anything controversial. My own sources tell me they're about to run an article saying that King Edward VIII might abdicate so he can marry Mrs. Simpson. That would be awful.

my letter to Steve:
Dear Steve,
"In other words, it's unlikely that every voter using an electronic voting device in 2006 will know for sure that his or her vote will be reflected in the actual totals. Six years after the 2000 electoral debacle, how can this be?"

Well, Steve, how many articles have you, or anyone else at Newsweek, done about this issue? Oh, that's right. In November of 2004 we were told that, despite a few "glitches," it was safe to ignore the "Internet bloggers" and "conspiracy theorists" and proceed with the inauguration.

Our elections are our responsibility. By assuring the public that there was "nothing to see here," you and your colleagues made sure that these systems would be designed, purchased, and implemented without adequate oversight.

Brad Friedman has over two thousand (2000!) pages on this subject. Might want to scroll through the site (BradBlog.com) before declaring that some sort of paper "receipt" is an adequate assurance that official election returns are accurate. In most cases, due to state law or legal machinations, they will never, ever be counted. See also The Free Press for a model of dogged, thorough, and brilliant reporting on election matters.

We posted comments a few days ago about Newsweak and its failure to cover statistical anomalies in the '04 vote totals. Did they finally catch on?

BTW, this is OT, but I've never ever watched Fox News, but have derived a negative opinion of it based on comments from you guys.

So, tonight on Coast to Coast AM radio, a Judge Andrew Napolitano was a guest for a half hour. He lambasted Bush, Gonzales, and General Hayden on the wiretapping issue in stronger terms than I could believe. He declared that Bush deserved to be impeached, and that Hayden's cooperation was felonious. He condemned Congress for failing to rein Bush in. On and on and on!

Yet this guy is a regular pundit on Fox! Can this inconsistency be explained to me?

The MSM is complicit in the debacle and until they apologize loud enough for the fools they have been fooling to hear, they continue to have my wrath. They have not fooled us but we recognize this is a step in the proper direction.

But the whole stock market is poised where Diebold stock is. And some are saying that is precipitous and fits a pattern that matches the 1987 pattern for disaster (link here).

I hesitate to say better late than never about the Newsweek story, because I do not know if it is too late or not.

I don't know if the eye of the public will bring anything to bear on the situation. These guys have been infected with the we don't give a s**t virus, and they have dragged their feet all along as BBV, VR, and BB have exposed them.

Neither does Diebold or anyone else know if it is too late. But if I were betting and had to rely on the big three, Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia, I would not rest assured.

Nor could any of the corporations I know of, that make up the residue of election machine makers, take up the slack.

No, the republican dictatorship engineered this HAVA debacle ... special thanks to Bob Ney ... and it is just one more bad law pushed down an unwilling public's throad by this rubber stamp congress.

A congress of lackies for the incompetent liars now ruining the people's White House. They should all quit and form a billboard company or a store front company, with a lot of smoke and mirrors but no substance.

They simply have no business trying to play in the big league where competence is the yardstick.

It amazes me how many facts have come out about the flaws of electronic voting, but nothing is ever done about it. When is something going to be done about it? How many fixed elections from now?

I have gone from an avid MSN watcher to virtually never watching them. I can't stomach their lies and bullshit, when I know the truth from multiple real sources online. No credibility whatsoever and a major reason our rich, crooked, special interest government has gotten away with what they have to date. Apparently 29% still tune them in as their only news source.

It is no longer enough to boot the Bush crime syndicate out of office. They have done way too much damage--e.g. the fifty trillion dollars in liabilities that we and our children down through the next ten generations must repay.

We need to think about redesigning America, because that's what we need to do after the coming crash. Few of our institutions will survive.

Appreciate your linking to my column. Can I have a nitpick of my own? For the record I have been writing about voting technology in Newsweek for several years (you can Google this!). Last week I wrote a column about the NSA datamining, but when I saw the results of that Diebold study I felt it appropriate to devote my column this week to the voting situation once more. As for the receipts versus ballots issue you bring up, in my limited space this week I simply considered the broader issue of auditability. Best, Steven

If you are saying, however, that the MSM (Main Stream Media) have been reporting what BBV (Black Box Voting . org), VR (Velvet Revolution . org) and this blog (via John Gideon) have been tirelessly reporting, and we bloggers have been tirelessly supporting, then you will find disagreement with me and I suspect most bloggers here.

That is not to say we are not forgiving. This is not about us, it is about the integrity of the election system and therefore democracy as we know it in the United States.

It most certainly is a story, and there most certainly has been a MSM blackout on this huge story (almost as big as the Duke Lacrosse story ).

Okay, some MSM acknowledgement ...however, as we are all aware, the propaganda effort here isn't an absolute closed system, and what isn't officially omitted or deemed False by the corporate/state nexus is trivialized, downplayed, specifically framed and so forth. I mean, even CNN has had to give marginal exposure to the massive 9/11 Truth Movement, while any sensible person understands that it's certainly not their position to bring "truth" to the issue.

My point being, with Diebolic, will the owners of MSM see it as benefitial to give the story legs by reporting on it with all due emphasis - you know, like a celebrity pregnancy, or some such nonsense - or will it be just like so many scandals that gets a brief mention before it scurries down the memory hole, only to resurface again in the fall accompanied by the usual "conspiracy theory" allegations? Frankly I'm not holding out for much of anything beyond the usual here.

NEWSWEEK!
I had a subscription for 30-something years, just let it lapse last spring, as they appeared incapable of even looking at this (most obvious) issue - American Democratic Elections!

I miss 'em. I used to tell my Pub friends that they could go to Newsweek if they wanted real fair and balanced reporting. Not Time, which leaned right, or US News, which was right. I hated to see Newsweek in the last few years apparantly helping by putting out pro-Bush puff pieces that looked like they coulda been written by White House press flacks...
Should I re-subscribe? Naaa...
Not yet anyway...

If the MSM had any balls, they'd look under the hood of the Voting System Standards and the hiring of lackies like Brit Williams, Stephen Berger and the like who trot out the vendors' wares and get paid to boot to "consult" with the EAC.

give ol' Steve a break! he is not personally representative of the MSM, nor is he responsible for anyone else's reporting but his own. it isn't fair to pile on him when he is actually paying attention. it's tempting to vent frustration at the new guy who shows up late to the party, but at least he's shown up!

save it for the folks who really deserve it --- those who participate in actively downplaying and ridiculing this disgustingly real situation. the vast majority of well-meaning media folk who are unaware, uninformed, or misinformed need information, not ridicule.

the question Steve asks at the end of his column is not meant for those of us who have been following along at home. for a Newsweek reader who is only now hearing about our endangered elections (in this particular instance, thanks to Steve), asking that question might actually wake them up. even the most recalcitrant naysayer would have to admit that it is, at the very least, unconscionable to still have these voting machine and election problems six years later.

thanks, Steve, for writing about this. and thanks to your editors at Newsweek for not spiking your column, as was done to Bob Koehler at Tribune.

Unless the story about Diebold and Hursti goes all the way back to Bruce Funk, and how he's been strongarmed out of office by a punitive Diebold, it's missing the point.

Diebold is not only infinitely hackable, now proven, but it is also dastardly. The bird of prey attack on Bruce Funk must be brought into the light for the country to see.

Here's my latest take, which the Salt Lake Tribune finally refused to print this week, after stating that it was rehashed old news, and that I had no personal experience or special expertise:

The time has come, Democracy said, to talk of many things:
Of Diebold, Funk, Ohio’s Ney,
Of Abramoff buying kings–
And why HAVA cannot matter–
Since the warnings that Hursti brings.

Okay, no more beating around the Bush – now Utah’s Emery County Clerk, Bruce Funk, is redeemed.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His March 23rd announcement that he would not use the Diebold voting machines Lt. Governor Herbert sent him caused an emergency closed-door meeting on March 27th with Diebold, the Emery County Commissioners and Attorney, and Michael Cragun, Elections official from Lt. Governor Herbert’s office – but not Funk.

When the doors were finally opened, Funk was told to use the Diebold machines. Unwilling to accept responsibility for their security, he threw it back on the Commissioners, who later insisted that was his resignation.

This all happened after the March 18 posting at www.blackboxvoting.com of an initial independent evaluation of Diebold’s TSx by Harri Hursti, Finnish computer security expert, and Security Innovation (consultant to Symantec, McAfee and Microsoft), based on their examination of two of Funk’s 40 machines, at his request.

For that, Diebold punished Emery County with a $40,000 fine. Yet none of this was reported by Michael Cragun on April 19, before the State Government Operations Interim Committee, updating the legislature about the voting machines implementation, with Bruce Funk seated nearby.

On May 11, the “Diebold Tsx Evaluation, SECURITY ALERT” from Hursti/Security Innovation was forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Diebold, then released publicly, at www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf, detailing “several backdoors” into a three-layer software structure which can “conceal the contamination very effectively... to penetrate, modify and make everything look normal,” overwriting “and therefore destructive for future forensic studies.”

Brad Friedman of www.BradBlog.com, the uniquely diligent investigative voting news blogger, reported that early word on Hursti’s report prompted Pennsylvania voting system examiner Dr. Michael Shamos to force some acknowledgement of the problems out of Diebold, followed by a lockdown of the Pennsylvania voting equiment.

The jig is up. Diebold machines, already creating chaos in the primaries, are hackable – easily, quickly and undetectably, without passwords.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. For years, computer scientists tried to dissuade us. The technology isn’t ready, especially with vendors working harder at securing contracts than securing election integrity.

These immense contracts are prompted by HAVA, the Help America Vote Act. Notice it isn’t called the Help America’s Votes Get Counted Act.

In fact, Congressman Bob Ney, under investigation for Abramoff dalliances, wrote and introduced HAVA, while Diebold paid $275,000 to Abramoff at Greenberg & Traurig, to secure the language in HAVA – with no voter-verifiable paper trail.

Meanwhile, Diebold donated very heavily to The National Federation of the Blind, encouraging accessibility without security.

Compliance with HAVA may be impossible, requiring the disabled to have “the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters”.

Ponder this: Can a voting system that serves individuals who are blind, also serve those who are deaf, as well as those in wheelchairs, and/or with dexterity issues? – And without any assistance that would allow someone to see their votes.

So, HAVA was written with absurd standards by a corrupt Congressman, under the influence of cash from a corrupt lobbyist, paid by Diebold, a company that corruptly sold uncertified software to California for the 2004 election (and settled out of court for $2.6 million), whose machines are revealed to be corruptible – with Bush’s most important election, legacy-wise, just months away.

New York State and Connecticut have demanded and received postponement of its HAVA compliance from the Department of Justice. Utah needs to do the same.

(Barbara Bellows-TerraNova is a Salt Lake City working mom whose side-mission it is to know more, and then share it – So, in October 2004 she performed her One Person Patriot Act, "Know Bush: Launching Facts That Shock and Awe" in Salt Lake City. "Democracy requires informed voters. Ultimately, it’s rude to not talk about politics.")

P.S. Hey Brad! Thanks for coming on Salt Lake's radio KRCL last Friday. That was me that didn't want to get off the phone!! When the Salt Lake Trib said they were concerned that I had a blogger amongst my sources, I was tickled to point out your recent invitation by Dan Froomkin. HA HA! Take that - oh might mainstreamers!

Steve #10
My Google search before I sent my letter turned up two articles by you on this issue: one from November 2002 and the one this week. Feel free to correct me on this.
My point stands. Our democracy is imploding, and the MSM has either ignored this issue, or covered it in an inconsistent/dismissive/superficial manner. The American public knows more about Aruba than it does our voting systems.
If the MSM were doing its job, the cover story would be: "Is he really President?"

Ricky 21
Well I guess if Brad was hiding anything then he would have censored your comment about congressman Jefferson. I believe Mr. Jefferson has received more than his share of coverage from the MSM as well as FOX TV News and FOX TALK Radio. Brad is trying to cover what the MSM is missing. He doesn't have time to do both.

If he had the same kind of financial support the the right wing affords the right wing bloggers perhaps he could hire a staff and cover it all.

If you want him to be able to cover it all I recommend you might want to send in YOUR DONATION RICKY! After all aparently you have a welcome voice here. That is more than I can say when I try to post on the right wing blogs.

re: #2, #10, #21
my letter from Steve:
Actually, Katherine, this is a big issue with me and I have written about it numerous times, to the point where a few years ago Diebold sent its CEO and executives here to Newsweek to try to explain themselves personally. (I wrote another tough column about that visit.) I can understand why any voter would be unhappy that this issue doesn't get more media attention, but do you really think it is constructive to direct sarcasm to journalists who are actually writing about these problems?
Best, Steven

my letter to Steve:
Steve,
My Google search before I sent my letter brought up only this week's article and the one from November of 2002. Correction on this point is welcome.
Steve, I am not "unhappy."
Steve, I am scared. Month after month, year after year, we who are paying attention are watching our democracy be systematically destroyed through chicanery and chaos.
Steve, I am outraged. This information has been out there, freely available, and there has been a virtual black-out in the MSM. The public is dis-informed, mis-informed, and un-informed on the crucial issues of our time.
My "sarcasm" doesn't begin to express the sense of betrayal I feel.
With the house in flames, at this point I am screaming at any fire truck that goes by.
You happen to catch my eye, so I scream louder.
My apologies if you feel abused.
I know how you feel.

Steve might be an exception to the rule that the mainstream (corporate) media have avoided election fraud like the plague. But I was responding to his specific question, "Six years after the 2000 election debacle...how can this be?"

How many mainstream media sources have appointed an investigative reporter to the issue? None, as far as I know. Not one, in six years. The New York Times has three columnists who would be called liberal by anyone's standard...Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and Bob Herbert. I have written individual letters to each of them, asking for just one measly comment on the issue, and an answer to the question, "Have you been censored by the editors?"

No response. None. Nada. The public editor, Byron Calame (who succeeded Daniel Okrent) refuses to even discuss it. Can this be possible without a deliberate censoring by higher-ups? No, it can't.

It isn't enough to write a "balanced" piece whereby the media present "conspiracy theories" on one side, and "debunked theories" on the other. As long as the whole question is presented in this way, the evidence will get ignored...subsumed into the political dimension of the issue, which are not relevant. As Brad has said a thousand times, this isn't about right and left, but about right and wrong.

Sorry to burst your bubble Ricky but your story is a headline story on the Raw Story website and it is a primary link on the BRADBLOG list first under other sites of interest. I guess that blows your theory.

Please forgive any body on this blog who sounds angry. We have sacrificed much for no reward for years now. I realize you don’t have the last word at Newsweek, but if there’s anything you can do to make this a cover story or a series of cover stories, I’ll forgive you and Newsweek for any mistakes in the past!

To put it simply, this country is becoming USED to stolen elections and pretending the officials placed in office are winning. This is s huge scandal that is literaly dividing the country. The pundits keep telling us “if it bleeds it leads”. We are bleeding!

By this November, our nation must absolutely cut through the technicalities of this issue and somehow agree to a system that both the Florida supreme court and the United States supreme court said we needed. A uniform voting standard.

I hope you would agree that it would have to be one that lets the people KNOW their votes are being counted. The news media is the only way we have of making that happen and we need to start yesterday with the discussion!

Either we find some way to accurately audit these machines BEFORE the coming election or they must go the way of the Concord!

Many thanks to the person above who suggested that Mr. Levy should look in the mirror.

With all due respect, and tremendous gratitude that you are actually writing about this, Mr Colmes, er, I mean, Mr. Levy, I would contend that the problem and responsibility for where we are now lies with the news organizations like the one you work for, that have abrogated their responsibility to be the public's watchdog.

Where was the mainstream media when the HAVA act came along, imposing these awful machines on us, and putting elections under the direct control of each states SOS? (Eg: Ohio's Blackwell) If there had been any decent MSM news coverage of what was IN the HAVA legislation, the public would have been up in arms about it and it could not have passed.

Why didn't the mainstream media cover the story of all the eligible black Florida voters in 2000, whose votes were not counted because their names were on the list made by ChoicePoint for Florida SOS Katherine Harris. Journalist Greg Palast tried desperately to break that story, which he said was easy to get to the bottom of, and he had it, well BEFORE the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Bush. If the public had known about all the thousands of black voters who had been denied their right to vote by Katherine Harris, it would have put a lot of pressure on the supreme court. But none of the networks or major newspapers would touch Palast's story. It never broke here until well after it had been written about in the British press. And of course, after Bush had been imposed upon us by the supreme court.

It is nice that NEWSWEEK has don this story of yours. But is that an effort to deliver the news, or just to acknowledge and control the story, by writing about it, if only so as to make the story go away? Will be more stories until the whole thing becomes common knowledge? Somehow I doubt it. Somehow, I suspect that the next article on this topic will suggest how Diebold is addressing the issue, and your magazine, albeit not you personally, will do their best to try to lull the public into thinking that all is well, and they can go back to sleep.

Of course I might be wrong, and I hope I am for the sake of our democracy.

For all you Brad Bloggers, Alter personally sent me a note last year telling me that he'd looked into the allegations of the 2004 election being stolen. He told me that if he believed the election was stolen, he'd have a team working on the story, but after looking into it, he simply believed "Kerry was outworked on the ground in Ohio."

Oh, he was outworked on the ground all right... by Misters Ney, Blackwell and the Rove fraud machine.

I PROPOSE A MASS MARCH ON DC TO LET THEM ALL KNOW,THIS HAS GOT TO STOP NOW!THE TRAITORS WHO PERPETRATED THIS VAST AND AGREGIOUS CRIME OF THE CENTURY,MUST BE PROSECUTED AND REMOVED FROM POWER!!WE SHOULD DEMAND THAT THESE SHAM ELECTIONS BE OVERTURNED, ON THE BASIS OF MASS FRAUD AND DECEPTION,AND INSTALL THE LEGITIMATE ADMINISTRATION,TO CLEAN UP THIS MASS OF DESTRUCTION WHICH WILL TAKE DECADES TO ERASE!!THIS IS A MOST DANGEROUS TIME IN OUR HISTORY,FOR THE THEFT OF OUR DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN PERPETRATED,SO,PATRIOTS,LET'S ALL TAKE IT BACK,NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES!!

I agree with the radicals here. If we've been too hard on you, Steve, please forgive us, but cut us some slack, because you and your colleagues have mistreated the election fraud issue for six years now.

That's right, you've mistreated it...just the same as if you had failed to feed your dog or beaten it with a broom handle for barking at you. You've ignored our protest letters. You've ignored evidence. You've taken the word of demonstrable crooks like Katherine Harris and Kenneth Blackwell that everything is copacetic. When the wheels of justice turned against Diebold and its chairman, Wally O'Dell, you scarcely mentioned it. Can we be forgiven for thinking you in the corporate media ignored O'Dell's ouster because you were embarrassed about ignoring the issue previously?

I'll be honest with you, Steve. I wouldn't use a copy of Newsweek to wrap fish with. You sound like a decent individual, and if you've taken hits for your employer, that's brave of you. But in no way, shape, or form do the corporate media, including Newsweek, deserve a pass at this point, merely for paying overdue lip service to a national scandal.

RLM #35, I'm with you on the fishwrap thing. To Steve Levy--hey, I begged your editors for months to cover the distorted election results, to even just take a serious look at the statistical anomalies. No go. I finally cancelled my subscription, and said why. Well, now the tide is turning. Even the MSM is getting an inkling of what's coming, and you guys are desperately trying to re-position yourselves as stalwart defenders of the Constitution. Forget it. You are finished. The taint will never fade, the stench of Vichy will never dissipate. Newsweak has cooperated in the trashing of our Republic, and I don't mean that it's been just sullied--it has been destroyed. I'd be looking for a new line of work, if I were you. Which is what you should have done when you realized in November of '04 that you were selling your soul for the job.

There IS no excuse for MSM not reporting what they know is going on.
I reject the 'better late than never' philosophical approach because what MSM is doing is obvious:
MSM did not suddenly grow a conscience.
The 'powers that be' are afraid that the entire country will find out what crap these machines are thanks to the (damn)(in their view) blogs. So what they are doing is damage control. They are trying to own the story now, so they can manipulate it & make it sound like it's not that bad.
Get a clue.
You know who these reporters sold their ass to.

What is an "unathorised (sic) source?" Please be more specific, Mr. Iredale.

Let me help you here. An unauthorized source, in this context, is a crook. An election thief. Someone whose goal was to flip votes.

Are you aware that in Youngstown, Ohio, on Election Day 2004, that votes were flipped all day? And, that every claim of a flipped vote involved one flipped from Kerry to Bush? And that the laws of mathematics prohibit all flipped votes going one way without fraud being the explanation.

So let's dispense with hedged phrases, O.K.? Let's stop using language like "unauthorized source" and call a spade a spade. After all, everyone working in Ohio in 2004 was authorized to be there...including the folks who shut down Warren County, flipped votes in Youngstown, made up 4,000 votes for Bush out of whole cloth in one precinct, swung thousands of votes to third-party candidates in Cuyahoga County (at Kerry's expense) and caused a little-known judge candidate from Cleveland to run ahead of Kerry on the Democrat line in Southern Ohio.

And, everything Blackwell did was "authorized," including removing legitimate names from voter rolls, deliberately shorting minority districts on voting machines, rigging the recount, and defying court orders before and after the election. Now this "authorized Christian" is running for governor, Mr. Iredale. I guess it's always "possible" that he'll be elected, with the help of "unauthorized" friends.

For Dredd: You have to be kidding. E.S.&S. is located on "Old Cheney Road" in Omaha?

Do you happen to know if there are any large Bushes along the road? Has the pavement been Blackwelled lately? I'm trying to get the Lay of the land...do you happen to Noe if it's a heavily traveled route that experiences DeLays? If your answer is Ney, good...I don't want to Rove around too much. Thanks.

OK y'all, let's calm down on the banging on poor Mr. Levy. At least he's there at all, unlock, say, the national issues or political reporters at the rag. Below is a copy of an email I got from Mr. Steve Levy and below that the e I sent him:

Thanks for writing. Unfortunately, Newsweek takes most of its stuff offline after a few weeks, and some of my other voting stuff isn't there.
I am the chief technology writer. I also wrote a book called Crypto, and some of the people I met in that pursuit are involved in voting tech (David Chaum). Weirdly, another source for a previous book about Artificial Life, David Jefferson, is also heavily involved in tech voting issues.

Best, Steven

On May 22, 2006, at 4:22 AM, Shannon Williford wrote:

I also read about your story at Bradblog. I did as you said and Googled you, finding 2 earlier stories; meaning you were on top of this waaaay before most of us were even aware of the problem... I had a subscription then, but I don't remember reading those columns before the '04 election. Did they run in the mag? What's your beat? Politics, tech, or what?
Thanks for staying with it. I'll actually buy a Newsweek to find your column.
The election theft of '04 was, indeed, the "crime of the century," and I suppose a lot of the folks like me who've been working for VVPBallots since early '05 are simply frustrated that it has not become a major issue.
I mean, folks can argue their points on the issues of the day all they want, but in reality, nothing matters except this. The administration has grabbed so much power that they may not be removed until somebody gets rid of the method of election fraud that you see.
This should be like Watergate, on the cover every week for months.
Anyway, thank you sir for trying to cover this issue. Please continue to follow it.

I found another funny. Preznit Blush has a sister named Bush Koch, and I am afraid to ask how it is pronounced (link here). Perhaps The Dick (apologies to The Donald) would shoot us a straight answer in the face.

But it gets better, because Justice "Big Dong" Thomas told Bush Koch to pray for Preznit Blush because "He's in real trouble" (ibid).

I wish they'd stop using just Diebold's name! Each time they say Diebold, they should say Diebold and all other electronic voting machines, since they're all the same crap. Our election supervisor thinks that because she didn’t buy Diebold, that she can say “we don’t have Diebold here, so we’re secure” is the all covering defense line for refusing to talk about real security issues that exist in all electronic voting machines and the need for paper trails. I'm so ashamed of our countries inability to comply with voter's intrinsic demand for auditable secured paper receipts.

P.S. Our apathetic election supervisor also stated that she just went to an ES&S Ivotronic vendor demonstration of it’s version of a paper trail and it was awful. Well of course the way she described it they are designing a faulty paper trail so the election supervisors can bitch about how ineffective they are. Well if we’re the customers than we need to demand what we want:
* No thermal paper, it has no archival quality (yep the few systems use it, so if you store them in heat they’ll not be legible…all in efforts to continue to help the frauds).
* The printers should not print till you hit ready to vote, then you acknowledge the print out and it prints your acknowledgment, just that simple! (They are designing systems that print every choice and mind change to bring confusion into recounts…..another attempt to screw up a good factor so frauds can bitch about recounts due to the inconveniences and confusions of recounts).

For Dredd: Doro Bush Koch used to be Doro Bush LeBlond before their divorce. Chippie LeBlond was from New Canaan, where I lived for 27 years. Doro is a Bush through and through...Poppy is a hero, Mom is the greatest, my brothers were my idols, yada yada yada. Her book should be a real page-turner, especially if she includes neat stuff about looking for sea shells at Kennebunkport.

Don't know what it proves, but New Canaan has a bad knack for producing Bush loyalists. Ann Coulter, Ari Fleischer, Paul Bremer, Lawrence Eagleburger...not to mention TV's Brian Williams, who might as well be given cabinet rank for shilling.

The more one thinks about E.S.& S., and about how Chuck Hagel sold the state of Nebraska its machines, then ran for the Senate and won an upset victory against a popular and better-known opponent with those machines in use, the more one imagines a World Series where George Steinbrenner provided his own baseballs to each pitcher, his own bats to both sides, and appointed his sons as umpires...and after the Yankees won an "upset" victory, the league never investigated and not a single sports journalist wrote a skeptical word about it.

If this had happened in another country (especially after 2000 and 2004 became basically the same deal), we'd have sent Jimmy Carter to investigate. When it happened here, it was business as usual.
And Nelson, the guy who got screwed, is now a Republican-leaning Democrat in the other Senate seat.

Dredd #48,
While I appreciate your enthusiasm and your unhappiness with the way we've been ignored and our nation has been screwed (using "electile disfunction" - ha! - I crack myself up! - cue the Bush and Dick lines...) by the powers that be; I don't think a "shoot the messanger" attitude helps. We should encourage and embrace ANYBODY who works within the MSM if they help us get the word out. We don't need to alienate the folks who are seeing the truth. The man (Levy) was on the story long before most of us, and he claims to have revisited it a number of times. I found two columns from '02 and '04 by doing a very quick search. I believe the guy. The problem is that he's the tech guy, and we're still ignored by the national affairs and political writers at Newsweek and elsewhere.

RLM - You’ve said it better then anyone here. We appreciate the fact that somebody is covering the story, at long last, but we also have to right to be angry at having to walk on pins and needles when we criticize the press for ignoring, and then just barley covering this long obvious story.

I was delivering Governor Richardson’s great letter about the machines and democracy to the Governor’s office here and ran into a local journalist who has his own talk show on Sunday morning. I pleasantly asked him if his station was going to cover the story about Bruce Funk and he said he tried to keep up on all the voting stuff but didn’t know who he was.

Thing one: I'd just like to point out that even Air America has never aired anything on the electronic voting machines, at least to my knowledge, and I'm a regular listener. There must be some kind of gag order saying that news organizations will lose their licenses if they speculate about election fraud or illegitimacy of elected officials. Those kinds of stories were all over the place after the 2000 election, but then not a peep after 2004. That's impossible without some kind of external force. We never see the wind, but we know it's there.

Thing 2: What's so difficult about an electronic voting machine? Why not just use standard cheap computers, with nice screens and a mouse, and have them print out a "ballot" on 8.5X11 inch paper complete with human readable information and bar-codes that the voter could visually compare to a template pubhished somewhere in the voting place--after the voter completed her/his seleections they would hit "print", and then after they satisfied themselves that the ballot reflected their choices, they would take it over to the scanning station, where the ballot would be pulled into a ballot box and the bar-codes would be read as it was sucked in. Or if you don't like that, then the ballots could all just be put in boxes without being read, and the reading of the ballots could take place at the close of the polls--publicly with lots of people observing, and computer monitors showing each vote as it is counted. People from each precinct should be able to watch the counting of the votes. Every step of the process should be done in public, or with video cameras recording everything, and people able to watch from outside.

THERE ARE JUST SO MANY BETTER WAYS TO DO THIS that don't involve the public being forced to "trust" things that CAN be corrupted, and which are invisible. If there's one thing that the founders of our country got right, it is that we shouldn't have to "trust" our leaders, and that there should be lots of checks and balances. Sure you can pick holes in what I've laid out in a few minutes, but the thing about voting is that it should be a public thing. HOW each person votes should be secret, but it should be quite easy to put a process in place that would allow voters to quickly vote using a computer, and creating a unique ballot that can then be read by machine.

The standard we should be comparing these electoin machines to it how it USED to be done, back when everyone just wrote their vote on a slip of paper, folded it in half, and put it in a locked box, and then with the room still full of voters at the end of the day, the officials would dump the box out, read and call out each vote, and people would tally them. That's a process that is pretty hard to corrupt in an undetectable way. If you bring in another box, people will see it. If you take a box out, people will see that. If one person tries to put many ballots into the box, everyone will see that. The whole process is based on lots of people being able to see everything, so that if bad things are attempted to be done, the resuts from that polling place are in question, and lots of people know about it and will scream about it, and maybe everyone from THAT precinct has to vote again, or whatever. Our modern technology should be giving us something much BETTER than what we used to have. What we have now is comparable to your taking your vote up to the official, and giving it to him. He then reads it, turns around, types some information on a computer that you can't read, shreds your ballot, thanks you for voting, and tells you you have to leave now. Then at the end of the day, he tells you who everyone voted for without anyone being able to say anything different. Then when people question the process, they official says that there is NO EVIDENCE that the process doesn't work properly.

For Larry Bergan: Thanks for the nice words. It seems Steven Levy has made a good-faith effort to cover election fraud; the fact that most Americans still don't realize the last two elections were stolen can only be the fault of his bosses, the editors.

As Seymour Hersh said, the story is "too big" to cover in depth. Steven's efforts only bear fruit if Newsweek appoints investigative reporters to follow up; otherwise they're like the sound of one hand clapping.

Watergate worked the same way. In the beginning, all the revelations about enemies lists and dirty tricks seemed like isolated events. Woodward and Bernstein were able to connect the dots, and we learned that Nixon approved paying the burglars and otherwise covered up massive fraud. In a Watergate context, what Steve Levy has done is tell us a few stories about dirty politics in the election booth. What's needed is a full-scale expose, but don't expect it from Newsweek...nor Time, nor The New York Times, nor CNN, nor any corporate-owned media oligarchy.

We are connecting the dots, Shannon. And guess what? The corporate media resent us for doing so.

Clyde Haberman, a moderate-liberal columnist in The New York Times, recently denigrated bloggers for not double-checking their facts before casting aspersions on people and for spreading conspiracy theories. I reminded him that his paper had ignored American election fraud all along, leaving the job of exposing it to bloggers, even as it gave us banner headlines about election protestors in Kiev filling the streets in freezing weather.

He thanked me for my message but otherwise wouldn't address the issue. Which proved to me that the subject is taboo at the Times, to the extent that all reporters and columnists have been barred from even responding to questions about it. Let's call it the "ostrich theory" of journalism...eschew an unpleasant topic, and maybe it will go away.

It's important to note that this Newsweek article comes as a DIRECT RESULT of local election official Bruce Funk's calling in of computer experts to evaluate the Diebold machines sent to his precinct. It has also resulted in articles for the New York Times and even the Wall Street Journal! Mr. Funk payed for this action with his job of 23 years! This would make a great American story if the press was willing to put a face on it. I highly doubt Bruce desires that, but would be glad if it resulted in honest and transparent elections around the country.

These giant media corporations are taking credit for exposing this discovery and giving no credit to the people who have been working on this for YEARS!

There is a guy named Brad Friedman who has a blog called "The Brad Blog". This is one of the only blog's in America whose main theme is election fraud. Without this blog, these stories would not be making to the mainstream press either. He has sacrificed more then he is willing to say for the cause and is getting very little financial help despite the FACT that the "big boys" in journalism are shamelessly scavenging his site and printing stories now that have been exposed for months or years by Brad and others like Black Box Voting’s Beverly Harris.

If anybody reading this is interested in free and fair elections in America PLEASE DONATE TO THE BRAD BLOG NOW!

Steven Levy (the author of the Newsweek article) left a message on the following tread from Brad's blog defending himself against some negative messages about his magazine, including a couple or three comments from myself and other “conspiracy theorists” who took the chance to bend Mr. Levy’s ear.

By the way, I’m obviously not a trained journalist and have to make an apology to KRCL radio. I made a post here about them not letting me ask Barney Frank about the voting machines. It is true that they had been talking about getting people interested in voting and "out to the polls" just barely before they told me they wouldn’t let me ask my question. I had to be away from the radio for the most part when I called, and didn’t have a chance to hear the entire program until it was posted on their web site.

The hour WAS focused on issues of homosexuality and the screener wasn’t really denying my right to free speech as much as people may have discerned by reading my post. I’ll be more careful in the future.

KRCL did an interview with the aforementioned Brad Friedman last week, but the MP3 isn’t up on their site just yet. Look for it.

I LOVE KRCL! PLEASE DONATE TO THE BRAD BLOG and JOIN AND SUPPORT DEMOCRACY FOR UTAH, “the last best hope” for Utah and America!